POPULAR SPOT – Officer Steve Maher and an attendee pull a table forward at the Phinney’s Lane police station to accommodate the crowd.

Hear compliments and concerns

Did anyone check the occupancy limit for the police department conference room yesterday?

Eager to get on the same page with the law, about 100 restaurant, bar and package store representatives crowded into the Phinney’s Lane station April 26 for a pre-season seminar on rules, regulations and plans to enforce them.

The department’s liaisons to the licensing authority, Officer Steve Maher and Det. Lt. John Murphy, reviewed the long list of what’s required of businesses that serve and sell alcohol. It was the fifth year of such sessions, and both officers took the opportunity to praise the business men and women for contributing to a relatively peaceful 2011 season,

But challenges persist and new ones arise, so Maher and Murphy were plain-spoken about intentions to use the rules to ensure customers’ peaceful enjoyment of town establishments.

It’s not enough for door staff to just check IDs, Maher said. “They should be making sure people are sober.” It’s no defense, he said, for a bartender to say he poured a drink for someone the doorman admitted improperly, and he suggested drinkers be asked again for an ID. “If they have to hold onto the bar while they get their wallet,” Maher said, leaving the rest to his listeners’ imaginations.

The officer stressed that “the sidewalks are not your property,” and that establishments have to supervise outside waiting lines. What is their property, in a way, is the customers who’ve been served that night. Maher said a venue’s responsibility extends past the premises to where a customer is parked, even if it’s across the street. He urged owners and reps to assign workers to clean up parking areas frequented by customers.

Maher said he and Murphy have seen a bouncer carry an apparently inebriated man out of a restaurant and put him in his car, and another time watched as a worker toted someone over to the bushes to vomit. Then there was the fellow who had to hold onto the wall to get back into the establishment.

Enough of this, he said, “and it’ll get to the point where we’ll have to go in to see if you are over-serving. As a group, you need to decide not to over-serve, or we’ll have to go out and regulate a lot more.”

Maher also advised caution in serving energy drinks. “They mask all that stuff, “ he said. “You get a wide-awake, happy, ready-to-go drunk.”

Throughout, Maher sounded one central theme: call us when a situation requires intervention. If you’ve called, he said, he’ll stand by you at a show-cause hearing.

Murphy noted an influx of excellent Chinese-made fake IDs, and he and Maher ran down a list of questions to ask customers when staff suspect a scam. There’s always a nice gimmick, Maher said; recently, he’s heard reports of underage people coming up to bartenders and telling them, “Hey, I forgot to pay for the drinks. Here’s 20 bucks. Can I get two more?”

The department will be doing stings again this summer, sending out an underage man or woman with just enough money to buy a drink, or a six-pack at a convenience store. All the staff has to do, Maher said, is ask for ID first and make the sale second. The operatives are instructed to leave the venues immediately if they’re asked for IDs.

Murphy, who heads the department’s street crimes unit, and Maher will host a mandatory meeting May 8 at 11 a.m. for businesses on Main, North and Ocean streets, and Barnstable Road that are open after 10 p.m. (the group includes the nearby Quarterdeck and Pufferbellies as well).

One goal is better communication among licensees regarding problem customers. The officers said a man suspected in a stabbing at one restaurant was seen across the street at another just a week later. We can’t tell you not to serve someone like that, the officers said, but they want to make operators aware at the very least.

Both men spoke of a “core” of 50 to 75 people who cause most of the late-night tensions downtown. “They don’t start out until 11 o’clock,” Maher said. “They’ll drop a couple hundred bucks in an hour and a half, (but) once they do something, your reputation starts to slide.”

Richard Scali, the town’s consumer affairs supervisor, advised the licensees that the state is looking for comments on changing happy hour rules in the face of the casino licenses that will be issued by Massachusetts in the coming year. These will allow the operations to serve free drinks to those gambling, he said, and the state wants to hear from restaurants and bars whether this would be considered an unfair advantage.

Scali suggested that licensees consider an offer by the owner of Tommy Doyle’s to host a meeting to explore creating their own organization to increase information-sharing.

A similar session is scheduled at the police station today (April 27) at 11 a.m.